Lesson Design

Analysis:

"College Success" it is a course that centers on self-discipline, self-appreciation, study habits, life as a student in the real world, and lots of self reflection and idea sharing. So what I am considering is a two-phase approach to the study habit area as well as the sharing. Having the students set up a bookmarking account and sharing it will help them with both online and library research (since I will also have them use the bookmarking tool to create their own personal article or book reference using proper citation ( citation will be a new lesson module as well) The idea, is to give them a personal bookmark foundation which they can use throughout their college career.

The second aspect would be to have then set up a social networking site. For this, we will be using s social networking tool that is academically oriented called Graduate Junction. This will move our discussions out of blackboard and into this tool. The logic here is that within Blackboard, the students lose access to the discussions when the class ends. By using a networking site, we can not only retain the discussions, but that site can exist beyond the class as a peer networking site through college, and perhaps beyond.

The coursework is already developed and has been evaluated, so what will be implemented and evaluated here is the deliver and facilitation modes. A redesign of the learning modules will direct the instruction with the web 2.0 applications involved. Basically, the segment will appear as follows:

For the assignments regarding research:
. ASSIGNMENTS: Week 4: Online Topics research**: Select one of the subjects from lesson #5 from page 37-38 of your textbook, On Course. FOLLOW THE DIRECTIONS ON THE SUCCESS TASK HANDOUT to gather at least 4 web links (links to web pages) that discuss that subject. Post each of these links on your ZooLoo account and leave a comment or link on at least two other student’s page from the class.

And for the social networking:
ASSIGNMENTS: Week 4: Journal Entry 5**: Complete Journal Entry #5 from page 37-38 of your textbook, On Course. FOLLOW THE DIRECTIONS ON THE SUCCESS JOURNAL HANDOUT AND THE DIRECTIONS FOR JOURNAL ENTRY 5 IN YOUR TEXTBOOK VERY CAREFULLY!! DIVE DEEP!!! FOLLOW THE DIRECTIONS ON HOW TO SUBMIT YOUR JOURNAL ENTRY in your Graduate Junction Profile.To submit your journal entry, use the Week 4: Journal Entry 5 assignmentlink on the left in the Table of Contents.

evaluating the use

Since this was a developed and evaluated segment of the course. My analysis would center on the usefulness of the web 2.0 tools as they are used to create interaction, learning and engagement among students. So a good part of the end-of-course feedback form will consist of questions regarding these learning activities. This should give me ideas for improvement and revision with the use of the tools, as well as the instructions. Through the social networking site, I will also send out a feedback for after a few years to see how many of the students continue to use the tools.

Results will be shared among the faculty and will hopefully help them shape their use of web 2.0 tools in the best manner possible for learning. Of course, it's use -and usefulness- will vary from course to course depending on subject matter. But for any online course, the bookmarking could be useful for research or for just gathering a list of sites relating to the subject matter.

A Rough Draft

Analysis:

"College Success" it is a course that centers on self-discipline, self-appreciation, study habits, life as a student in the real world, and lots of self reflection and idea sharing. So what I am considering is a two-phase approach to the study habit area as well as the sharing. Having the students set up a bookmarking account and sharing it will help them with both online and library research (since I will also have them use the bookmarking tool to create their own personal article or book reference using proper citation ( citation will be a new lesson module as well) The idea, is to give them a personal bookmark foundation which they can use throughout their college career.

The second aspect would be to have then set up a social networking site. For this, we will be using s social networking tool that is academically oriented called Graduate Junction http://www.graduatejunction.net/ .This will move our discussions out of blackboard and into this tool. The logic here is that within Blackboard, the students lose access to the discussions when the class ends. By using a networking site, we can not only retain the discussions, but that site can exist beyond the class as a peer networking site through college, and perhaps beyond.

The coursework is already developed and has been evaluated, so what will be implemented and evaluated here is the deliver and facilitation modes. A redesign of the learning modules will direct the instruction with the web 2.0 applications involved. Basically, the segment will appear as follows:

For the assignments regarding research:
. ASSIGNMENTS: Week 4: Online Topics research**: Select one of the subjects from lesson #5 from page 37-38 of your textbook, On Course. FOLLOW THE DIRECTIONS ON THE SUCCESS TASK HANDOUT to gather at least 4 web links (links to web pages) that discuss that subject. Post each of these links on your ZooLoo account and leave a comment or link on at least two other student’s page from the class.

And for the social networking:
ASSIGNMENTS: Week 4: Journal Entry 5**: Complete Journal Entry #5 from page 37-38 of your textbook, On Course. FOLLOW THE DIRECTIONS ON THE SUCCESS JOURNAL HANDOUT AND THE DIRECTIONS FOR JOURNAL ENTRY 5 IN YOUR TEXTBOOK VERY CAREFULLY!! DIVE DEEP!!! FOLLOW THE DIRECTIONS ON HOW TO SUBMIT YOUR JOURNAL ENTRY in your Graduate Junction Profile.To submit your journal entry, use the Week 4: Journal Entry 5 assignmentlink on the left in the Table of Contents.

thoughts on Wikis

The quoted definitions of what a wiki is are somewhat hard to understand. But for me, visualizing Wikipedia as an example makes it more clear. It's a place where information and knowledge is shared in the form of definitions, instructions and references, including web links. So how would this be good for an educational or training atmosphere? lets just say it's about as good for that as water is for plants. Akin to a devoted Knowledge management system, a wiki provides a centralized location for definitions, job aids and training materials that make a company's training accessible 24/7. Need a workflow diagram? Information about company leave time? A schedule of upcoming training seminars. It can all be linked in one ay or another in a wiki. But due to the public, or at least somewhat insecure nature of information on a wiki. A company would likely be more comfortable using a dedidcated KMS (knowledge Management System) such as Microsoft's Sharepoint. But in a way, one might even be able to argue that the flow of a KMS is really just a different form of wiki.
For education, the wiki really shines. So much of learning comes from the exploring and interactions with peers. Being able to share this, and even build upon other's experiences could create a learning tool that can be shared with future learners, and even be a source of research. A wiki is perfect for group activities, for discussions, and for sharing projects - not just with the rest of the class, but also with the world.

But the key to wikis is the self-monitoring. In fact it is a critical aspect. Since information can be posted anyone in a group, or in the case of a public site like Wikipedia anyone in the world, can post and edit information. From my own experience and as a simple test, I challenged the self-monitoring if Wikipedia once. By editing information within a page about Elvis Presley, I changed the information to indicate that Elvis was alive and living in a small house in Roswell New Mexico. I monitored that post for three days before someone deleted it. (I would have eventually fixed it myself, of course) The point is, as much as wiki can provide acuurate information, it can also provide inaccurate information. But herer is no doubt it has tremendous value in learning. Personally, I find myself often visiting Wikipedia to learn about something from history, or to find out a definition (I even used it to look up the meaning of Wiki. Derived from the Hawaiian term wiki wiki, meaning fast)

So for this week, I am going to try out a demo of GroveSite which is a wiki development software. Impressions to come!

podcasting

better late than never, here is some sharing of work I've done about podcasting. This is a fully developed research proposal that I will likely be implementing down the road since there is very little formal research (especially quantitative) on the educational value of podcasting. Unbelievable though. Apparently Blogger doesn't allow me to attach a file to a post. So I'll have to see about getting it up on the web so I can link to it.

The Tentative Plan for my Project

One of the classes I teach regularly here at CNM is called "College Success" it is a course that I wish I could've taken before I started my college career. It centers on self-discipline, self-appreciation, study habits, life as a student in the real world, and lots of self reflection and idea sharing. So what I am considering is a two-phase approach to the study habit area as well as the sharing. I think having the students set up a bookmarking account and sharing it will help them with both online and library research (since I will also have them use the bookmarking tool to create their own personal article or book reference using proper citation ( citation will be a new lesson module as well) The idea, is to give them a personal bookmark foundation which they can use throughout their college career.

The second aspect would be to have then set up a social networking site (I know there is an academic variant of facebook out there, I will just have to find it) We will them move our discussions out of blackboard and into this tool. The logic here is that within Blackboard, the students lose access to the discussions when the class ends. By using a networking site, we can not only retain the discussions, but that site can exist beyond the class as a peer netwrking site through college, and perhaps beyond.

This week: A look at ZooLoo

for this week's assignment, I decided to random;y "google" the term "free photo and and Media Sharing" and selected a service called ZooLoo. Signing up was the easy part, but one soon finds the site to be a little convoluted. They seem to want to have connectivity to everything else. This could be a good thing since it allows one to share posted between sites, and can even send a Twitter message when a new image or posting is made. Definitely a plus for the diehard web 2.0 aficionados. For educational use though, I think the myriad of options and related instructions required would make it more troublesome than useful (unless it was a class about web2.0 perhaps)
Uploading and annotating image posts is rather straightforward, and I had no problem at all getting a picture in there. Once you have more than one, it allows you to categorize them into "albums" any way you choose.
The service also provides a dashboard with Google searching, RSS feeds, weather, news and other widgets you can customize ( like I said, they want to be the all-in-one)
don't get me wrong though, I do sort of like this approach since in a previous post I referenced an article that presented the notion there being too much out there to keep track of. ZooLoo has taken some broad steps to not just be a image presentation site, but to become a user's homepage with interaction many of the popular web 2.0 utilities. I plan to spend more time there (because I want to), so may have an addendum to this posting.
you can see my "site here

some additional thoughts...
mulling it over, I do think that, with a good integration in lesson-planning, this site could be useful for education since it does provide a sort of "portal" to several tools. From this central location, a class can share media, link to a facebook site, twitter one another, and custom links to a bookmarking site can also be added. The portal can also support RSS content, so students could personalize their own "class portal" page.

Can MySpace make better writers?

I'm inclined to agree with the author that tools such as MySpace, Blogs etc. can foster better writing skills, especially if the student knows that peers will be viewing, or that it will be graded. Next time I see one of our English faculty, I will have to ask for an opinion. I do grade grammar in the courses I teach to some extent. These are are college success courses where a journal is kept by each student. This could fit very well in an online journal or personal blog too.
One thing I do disagree with the author about is the significance of creative abbreviation. it's not bad thing. But I believe there is time and place for it - that is when one is sending a text message. I feel it is important to distinguish for students, that this is not something to be randomly used, and especially not to be used in professional communication. Case in point; the text below is from a sale representative who contacted me as part of my job. This was the first communication I ever received from him:

Dear Brian,

(company) provides subtitling services for live streams and on-demand video content.
We would like to discuss partnering with Central New Mexico Community College in order to bring these capabilities to your target audience.

Please LMK who would be the best person to contact.

Am I just being nit-picky, or does he really "kill" his introduction with that "LMK"?

His company does provide a valuable and needed service for online learning. But I feel someone from his organization should talk to him about professional correspondence.

What's the Difference?

I'm a bit off-topic once again here. But I just retrieved some notes I took at a conference last year where we sort of defined the differences between web 2.0 and the previous -which we were calling web 1.0 :

Web 1.0:
-had static pages which were mostly code-based (HTML)
-for communication they just had feedback forms and guestbook signing
-information was basically one-way (publisher to you)

Web 2.0:
-the pages are dynamic, consisting of HTML, XHTML, Java, Flash etc.
-communication is not just back and forth, but multi-way. Publisher to you, you to publisher, you to world
-information is at minimum 2-way but usually mirrows the communication aspect goinf in multiple direction through the use of blogs, wikis and other tools.

we also came across Commoncraft, which you may find to be a great source for simple explanations of just about everything, including web 2.0 tools are. But be careful! it's easy to get "caught up" there and before you know it, you've been there for an hour..or even longer!

My FavoritUS Bookmarking page

I just randomly chose one and spent some time figuring out how it works. I have a few links now. Stop by and visit
I also placed it under "Great Links" there in the upper left corner.
For a random selection, I really like FavoritUs (except for the name..how exactly is that pronounced? )
For a clas it can cater to the creativity and individualism of the student since it doesn't just allow different layouts, but also allows for custom icons to identify each link. You can create one from their list, or you can upload your own created icons.
Using the site is fairly intuitive with clearly labeled tools and I really had no problems at all setting it up.
I can see this, and any other bookmarking site being very useful in education for collecting online references for a research project, collectong links a part of a study guide. or even as an element of a group activity where an instructor has the links set up, and assigns a group to synthesize the information and present it (along with the links) to the class.

New Note* Sharing it is apparently tough to do. I have to copy and paste emails into it to share it with friends. Apparently it's not a "public" bookmarking site.

web 2.0 technology

Is the word technologies actually the plural of the word technology? Arguably, the word "technology" describes a range of things, so is already both singular and plural. I digress though, since this post really isn't about that discussion (unless you want it to be)
Actually its more about how sometimes good things just fall into your lap.
Attached to an email today, I got this terrific (terrific used be a word used to describe something very frightening...but this isn't the case) PDF called "Using web 2.0 Technologies"


But I just can't figure out how to attach a PDF to Blog post..
So send me your email address if you'd like a copy.

Learning in the digital age

A few years ago I co-authored a small study of social presence in online learning. One of the things we saw was that, online, even the quietest student (who you would see only in the back row of a face-to-face class) felt a freedom in that online presence that allowed for much easier interaction. This alone, one could argue, is why learning in the digital age is better. We all feel an ease to posting online and that makes great strides in social communication.
But as you can see by the recent surge of cyber-bullying cases, there is a downside to the "psychological freedoms" that online presence allows. More than the punk who harasses in the hallway, such behavior is now seen by everyone. And true or not, harassment online can seem even more evil. As a result there is a corresponding increase in the hurt it can produce. Sadly, this has played out too many times already to bad results.
I would propose that whether is a group of 5th graders or a cohort of adult learners, it is a good idea to display a policy of zero tolerance. If for no other reason, it makes people aware of the potential and how to handle situations.

Click here to view a good resource article on cyber-bullying (or visit the following URL)

http://teaching-media-literacy.suite101.com/article.cfm/classroom_resources_to_teach_about_cyberbullying

Web 2.0 thoughts

One of the first things I did was to seek out what the consensus was on the "driving" forces of web 2.0 . one site, http://www.ebizmba.com/articles/web-2.0-websites lists the top 15 most popular web 2.0 websites. Among them are the more well-know names such as Twitter, Craigslist and Youtube. Curiously though, it does not list sites such as Facebook or linkdyn. Does this mean that the site author believes social networking is not an element of web 2.0? One might jump to that conclusion. But digging a bit deeper it appears that he used the term "web 2.0" out of convenience as a category name for one of several lists, all of which are likely components of web 2.0, such as "the 25 most popular Blogs," "top 20 Social Bookmarking site," and "the top 20 social networking site." There were many more, including job-hunting, Health, Travel etc.

So what's my point?

Perhaps reflecting partly on my own cynicism about the way society tries to neatly box concepts, I see a lot of unintentional misuse of the "web 2.0" label likely derived from the perceived need to mark clearly defined lines on "what is" and What isn't" web 2.0
The reality is that like the concept of "cloud computing" (which will no-doubt be as equally misunderstood and misused) web 2.0 is a natural trend of the evolution of the internet which is as likely to touch everything online to one degree or another. As soon as retailers figured out that thay could safely (?) retain your order info an compare your buying habits to others to shape marketing, web 2.0 was born. Certainly, there are still many sites where one cannot post comments, save personal data or create a profile and therefore may not be embracing the concepts of web 2.0, But I would argue that the mere ability to include "contact us" email too makes it part of the 2.0 trend.

your thoughts?

The Starting Line

well here's the second Blog I've created ..but before you mistake me for some kind of "expert," the first blog was a short-lived experiment. This one will be more permanent.